Jeremiah 29:11 won't save us

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

            Do you know what is the most popular biblical verse among millennials? John 3:16? Nope. The 23^rd Psalm? Nuh uh. Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, Philippians 4:13, Romans 8:28, Psalm 46:1, Hebrews 11:1? Not. A. One. Of. Them.

            The most popular verse among millennials is Jeremiah 29:11 and it isn’t that close. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” It sounds so pleasant, so promising. It’s exactly what we want to hear. It’s also badly misused.

            Let’s keep reading starting with Jeremiah 29:12: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

            If you assume that everything is about you, then it’s easy enough to start thinking that you have been sent into exile proverbially; that you are being gathered in by God so you’re your fortunes will be restored—whatever that means. The problem is that God is not speaking metaphorically here because God is not speaking to us—at least that’s not the clearest understanding of this passage. He is speaking to Israel. I’m guessing you might hear this differently when you know it’s addressed to Israel and not to you: “I know the plans I have for you… plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” The most legitimate gripe leveled against millennials is that we make everything about us. I think that can be unfair, but in this case we are guilty; this scripture is not about us. Period.

Giving, Losing, Worrying, and Making the World a Little Better

Luke 12:13-21

I have to admit when I first read the scripture this week for Harvest Festival I turned skyward, maybe shook my fist a little, and said, “Whatchu doin’ to me?” Can’t I just have duckies and bunnies just one Sunday—on Harvest Sunday, pretty please? Why is the Bible filled with so much law?

            We had a rough start to the week in our house. Somebody stole my identity and managed to run our accounts into the ground and messed with our banking and did all sorts of damage. I’m still sorting it out. Anything with money can be just anxiety-producing, can’t it? I actually awoke in the middle of the night Tuesday and couldn’t get back to sleep because I had the sudden, paranoid fear that the person I had talked to the night before wasn’t actually who I thought it was. This is the kind of thing this does to you; like a break-in or a theft or worse.

            That anxiety stuck with me a good portion of this week.

            Then, Natalie and I went to see my grandma for her 100^th birthday on the last couple days. Let me tell you what you don’t worry about at 100 years old: Much. You don’t worry about much. My grandma had a stroke earlier this year and it shows. She isn’t as aware as before, but she is still there when you’re up close and when she has the time to figure out who you are. It’s like she had her own small bubble and when a person entered it she just lit up. When nobody was in the bubble she just sat there peaceably, just soaking in the party. I had worries—worries about our finances generally with a lot up in the air for our family at the moment, worries about a funeral back here without me, which is silly because I knew Kate would do fine; I had stress about today’s services, about the Thanksgiving service tonight. Today is a tank-emptying kind of day for me, which means I’m also tempted to worry that I’ll probably get sick for Thanksgiving.

            Do any of you ever do this to yourselves?

What is justice, really?

Amos 1:1-2, 5:14-15, 21-24
 

            Amos is a prophet who is well-known for talking about justice. “Let justice roll down like waters,” he says. I imagine in the pre-Jesus Jewish world this was something you would put on a bumper sticker—you know, stick it to the butt of your camel and show everybody what you stand for. But this, like so many words and phrases that means something to us—justice, righteousness, those kinds of things—are loaded words. Is our idea of justice anything like Amos’ justice? Like God’s justice?

            Everybody is “for” justice, right? Nobody is going to say, “I like injustice more than justice.” But once we get past the initial polling of whether we like justice or not there is the difficult question of defining what justice is. Is it retributive justice? An eye for an eye? Is it a fair sentence for a crime? Is it the bad guys getting karma? Is it restoring victims? What is it?

            See, I don’t really like preaching on justice because I think it’s too easy for all of us to hear what we want to hear. If you’re of a liberal persuasion you may hear justice and think “social justice”—equality, empowerment, all that—and if you’re of a conservative you might hear justice and think “just desserts”—you get back what you deserve, what you earn, what you worked for. God’s justice, according to the Bible, seems like both those views and neither at the same time. In order to understand God’s justice we need to understand the law and where better to look for the law than with Ten Commandments.

Searching for Silence

1 Kings 19:1-18

There was a great mountain-shattering wind… but God was not in the wind.

            There was an earthquake, fearsome-shaking… but God was not in the earthquake.

            There was a fire, a blazing inferno, all-consuming, destroying… but God was not in the earthquake.

            Then, lastly, finally, there was the sound of… silence. What is that sound exactly?

            The Hebrew says Qol demamah daqah—literally a voice of small silence. I think I like the Common English Bible’s translation best: “After the fire, there was a sound. Thin. Quiet.”

            Whatever it is, it is contrasted to the elemental forces named before. It makes sense for God to come in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire; we’ve seen God come in all of those forces to Abraham and Jacob and Moses and to Israel in its wandering. We know God comes with a bang, but what’s more surprising is that God comes in “thin quiet.”

            If you’re talking you won’t hear it. If you’re not listening closely it will pass you by. You’ll become convinced that God never speaks, but how could you hear the voice of God with all this noise in your life?